Blues Legend Buddy Guy: ‘I Don’t Want to Be the Best in Town, I Just Want to Be the Best Until the Best Come Around’

American blues musician Buddy Guy is back in India for his sixth appearance at the Mahindra Blues Festival, which will take place this weekend at Mumbai’s Mehboob Studios. The gig will also mark the multi-Grammy award-winning artist’s final show in India as he is currently on his worldwide Damn Right Farewell Tour. As one of the few international musicians to perform in India as many times as he has, we caught up with the living legend and his drummer-producer Tom Hambridge to find out what it is that makes him keep coming back to India, how his songs are written in the studio, why he’s going to stop touring, and more. Read below.  

I last interviewed you in 2020 when you performed at the Mahindra Blues Festival back then. What was your experience like living through the pandemic over the last few years? 

Guy: Well, I’ve been trying to deal with it [the pandemic] just like everybody else. You notice I still got my mask on and at my age nothing hardly ever passes me by. I catch a cold every time this [the mask] goes swinging by. So, you just got to deal with the daily life and go back to normal the best you can. Because it’s out there, it’s a worldwide thing, and ain’t nothing I can do but talk about it and follow the experts to try to stay well. 

Last year you released your 19th album The Blues Don’t Lie. How has writing and recording an album changed over the years and do you find different ways to keep things fresh? 

Guy: Well, you have to give my producer and drummer [points at Tom Hambridge sitting beside him] credit for that because he’s 99.9 [percent] writing all the stuff that I’ve been doing in the last several years. It’s always like an everyday life. If you listen to some of the lyrics in blues, you sound like the guy who’s singing it, that it happened to. I remember the great [American blues artist] Eddie Boyd. He made a record about working in the steel mill for five long years. When I sang it one night, I think it might have been in Brazil, a guy walked up to me and said, ‘How long did you work at a steel mill for?’ I’ve never been in a steel mill, man, so you can pick up a little by somebody else. I wrote this song ‘Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues’ and I love sports and I was trying to shoot pool and I was knocking the ball out of the pocket, not in the pocket, and a guy said, ‘Are you gonna play some blues?’ I said, ‘You damn right, I’m mad at myself.’ And I said that’s a good title for a song, and I went to England and recorded it. So, everything you hear somebody else say you can always take something from that and make it yourself. 

Hambridge: Well, the title track for The Blues Don’t Lie, that’s the first song I wrote for the record, but I ended up having dinner with him [Guy], and he was telling these amazing stories and one of the stories he said was about [American blues artist] Sonny Boy. Sonny Boy went to Little Rock, Arkansas. He left Chicago and went to Little Rock and he [Guy] goes, ‘Well, Tom, I think he went home to die.’ I just remembered that I was trying to write songs for this record and I went, ‘Sonny Boy went to Little Rock, he was going home to die.’ And then the next thing that came out of me when I was writing with my pen was, ‘Sonny boy told the truth, and the blues don’t lie.’ And I got chills and I was thinking about it, and I thought I’m going to run this by Buddy. When he [Guy] sang it, it was so chilling in the studio, so that’s kind of how a lot of the stories, a lot of the songs as you know from these albums that we’ve been making, the main pieces are part of his [Guy] journey and life. Things that he’s seen, tasted and experienced.  

Guy: When I went to Little Rock, the reporter was like you. He just came there to interview me and he said, ‘You know, Sonny Boy just came here before he died.’ I didn’t know that. He interviewed Sonny Boy, maybe a month or two before he died, and he asked Sonny Boy, ‘Why are you coming back to Little Rock?’ Well, he said, ‘I came home to die.’ That’s heavy. 

[To Hambridge] Apart from Buddy Guy, you’ve worked with a number of artists including Lynyrd Skynyrd, what was that like? 

Hambridge: Well, I was a big Lynyrd Skynyrd fan, a big ZZ Top fan and I’m a fan of Buddy, B.B. King and all these people that I get to work with. I had some success with a bunch of people and they [Lynyrd Skynyrd] sought me out and came to my house and said, ‘We want to write songs with you or have you write songs for our record,’ and I couldn’t believe it. They are friends of mine and I still enjoy working with them, and I wrote the title [track] of their latest record that’s about to come out. 

You’re currently on your farewell tour and last India visit. What was it that made you decide that this would be your farewell tour? 

Guy: Well, you know, this year I’ll be 87 years old. I was born on a farm in Louisiana and I started picking cotton when I was six years old. Can you name a person that started working at six years old and at 87 is still working? It’s time to step aside now and say, ‘Let me listen to some young person.’ I might still play something like this. I might go play a festival or something like that once or twice. But from point A to point B on the bus and on the planes every day and traveling like that, it catches up with you. As you get older, I learned from B.B. King a few years before he died, he had started not remembering his songs and it’s beginning to happen with me now. Ten years ago, I could look at a song twice and say, ‘I got it.’ Now I got to keep it [on a sheet] for three months before I can memorize it.  

This is your sixth visit to India. What is it that makes you keep coming back to India and traveling this far? 

Guy: The beautiful people. As you’re interviewing me, I’m looking at these good-looking women. They’ll make you come back here [laughs]. Ain’t nothing wrong with a sight for sore eyes. What’s wrong with that? [Laughs]. 

Having visited India on multiple occasions, are there things about the country that you find interesting? 

Guy: Maybe 30 years ago, I could tell you some of the things that I would love to see, but man, the bed calls me like this now when I come in. But I just love it from day one. My grandparent told me that somewhere in my family they had kind of Indian cheekbones. We might have a little India in me. In the history books, they said Columbus discovered America, but he was looking for India.  

At 87, what is it that pushes you to go out and play every night? 

Guy: When I see a frown on somebody’s face, if I hit a note on the guitar and see a smile instead, I think my work is done. See, I don’t play for myself no more. I play for the people who think enough of me to come see me play, and I think I owe them everything. I don’t want to be the best in town, I just want to be the best until the best come around. 

The last time I interviewed you in 2020, I asked you about which young blues artists you were listening to and you spoke of Christone “Kingfish” Ingram. He’s here now on the Mahindra Blues Festival lineup, which is great. What do you make of the modern state of blues music globally? 

Guy: Well, I’m glad he [Kingfish] is here because you don’t hear much blues no more. Everybody looks for a role model and they don’t play blues highly anymore. We got what’s called a satellite radio that plays it, but your big radio stations won’t. They don’t play [American blues legends] Muddy Waters or a Howlin’ Wolf or people like that. A Sunday night blues program comes on at 11.30 [pm]. Now what kid at 12 years old is up at 11 o’clock waiting to hear a blues show, he don’t know. My children didn’t know who I was until they got 21. That’s when you’re old enough to come to a blues club. My son would play records of Michael Jackson and Prince and every time they put my record on, he would go take it off. When he came in the club at 21, he said, ‘Oh my God, I ain’t know you could do it.’  

Once your tour is done, what plans do you have? 

Guy: Keep watching these young people and if I can help them in any way, I will. My mom and my grandma, when we would ask questions, they’d say, ‘I ain’t dead yet’ [laughs]. I’ll be going places and listening to them, because for the rest of my life I still love music. Gospel, jazz, I listen to all of it.